The Chesterfield football history resource

It
is ironic that perhaps the greatest "Character" among Chesterfield's
ex-players did not play League football for us. His name? Charlie Bunyan.

Charlie
rose to national and international attention as his career developed along
generally haphazard lines. The illegitimate son of a straw plaiter, Charlie was
baptised in Campton, near Biggleswade in 1869 but spent his youth in the
Bedfordshire village of Shifford. It was too common a practise in those days
for a young unmarried mother and her child to be "exiled" from her
family's home to live with friends or cousins in a nearby village; if this was
the case with Charlie and Martha, his mother, it might explain the obvious
contempt he held for authority, for much of his early life.

Charlie's
mother married, and the family migrated to Cow Lane, in Brimington, in 1880 - a
frequent enough move for agricultural labourers who found that they could earn
more by putting away the hay rake and picking up a coal shovel. At that time a
rural Bedfordshire accent was nearly as common as a Derbyshire or Irish one on
Chesterfield's streets.

Charlie
began playing football for local sides called Old Horns (who apparently gave
him a testimonial at the age of 15!) and Spital before playing his
first Chesterfield Town game in 1886. He was destined for better things,
though, and became a professional with Hyde Football Club in 1887. Bunyan was
in the nets on the day that Hyde conceded a record twenty-six goals to Preston in the
FA Cup, but was reckoned to have kept out as many as he let in, and little
blame was attached to him for the result. His career reached new heights with
moves to Sheffield United and Derby County, for whom he played nine times in
the League.

Charlie
re-joined the Spireites for their second Sheffield League season in 1892 and
immediately hit it off with the fans. He combined his Town career with that of
a publican, at 'The Marquis of Hartington' and, as the pub was no more than
five minutes' walk from the ground, it was usually packed to the gunwales with
Town fans anxious to pick up the juiciest gossip about their team. Bunyan
developed a lucrative sideline here, selling home-made shinguards to the local
players who drank on his premises. The club's committee were suspicious of
Charlie's popularity, though, and relationships between player and club were
often on a short fuse.

In
Bunyan's day goalies were allowed to handle the ball anywhere within their own
half. Charlie often made good use of this fact, and would wander up the field
to join in attacks. When a goal was conceded with Bunyan still in the
opposition's half, berating his forwards, the club's patience snapped, and they
sacked him. Around this time, Charlie enjoyed one of his many occasional clashes
with the game's authorities and was suspended after altering a
transfer form. Town's Felix Davis celebrated his move to Brampton Works with a
few jars in The Marquis of Hartington, where Bunyan got his hands on the form,
scratched out Brampton's name and replaced it with "Derby County". It
emerged that Bunyan stood to gain financially every time the Rams signed a player
on his recommendation.

The
forgery became transparent when The Rams telegrammed The Spireites to ask about
this bloke they'd just signed. An inquiry was conducted with undisguised
bitterness between Bunyan and the club; Bunyan alleged that the club had tried
to ruin him by putting fans off his pub, and there might have been something in
this, given that The County Hotel, 100 yards away from Bunyan's pub, was owned
by Chesterfield's Treasurer! Bunyan was suspended from football for six months
after the inquiry found him guilty.

After serving his suspension Charlie showed up in Ilkeston colours; he had taken a pub there, The Poplar, and also dabbled as a theatrical impresario, bringing acts to the "Poplar Palace" music hall, which one imagines was attached to the pub. Moving away from Derbyshire, Bunyan clocked up 44 League appearances
for Walsall and joined New Brompton, now Gillingham, in 1898. 1901 saw him
plying his trade in Newcastle and he is reported to have spent the 1905-6
season in Canada.

In
1908 he became player/coach to Brimington Athletic, and a new avenue opened up
in his career as his character mellowed. He became one of the first Englishmen
to coach overseas, being appointed football and cricket coach to the Racing
Club, Brussels, in 1909. He served as assitant to Willie Maxwell, the Belgian
national manager during this time, and continued this dual role until moving to
Sweden to coach Örgryte IS, of Gothenburg, who were the leading Swedish club
side of the day. His work here led to his being offered the job of coach to the
Swedish national side as they prepared for the Stockholm Olympics of 1912.

Charlie
returned to Belgium after the Stockholm Games to coach Standard Liege, remaining there until
1915, when it seems that living under German occupation became too much for
him. He and his sons returned to England in November; in Charlie's own
colourful account they posed as Belgian refugees to make good their escape.

Within
thirty-six hours of reaching the safety of the England in November 1915, he and
his sons Charlie, Maurice and Ernie walked into a recruiting centre in London
and volunteered for the army. Although the recruiting officers weren't that
particular about who they took, Bunyan still had to lie about his age, taking
eight years off to get in and, in his late 40s, Lance-corporal Charlie Bunyan
saw service on the Western front with the Footballers' Battalion.

Charlie's
health suffered greatly in France; he reported sick on Christmas Day 1915 and
was eventually diagnosed as suffering from shell shock. The medical examiner
reckoned him to be "debilitated and tremulous," as well as
prematurely aged, and he was eventually discharged in May 1916 after his true
age had come to light during his illness. After the end of the war he returned
to Belgium to coach Anderlecht and died in the Brussles suburb of Ixelles in
1922. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this brave man's war
service played a significant part in his comparatively early demise.

Charlie's
death did not end the Bunyan influence in international sport. A son, the
Brimington-born Maurice, scored goals for fun at the Racing Club (Brussels) and
Stade Francais, in Paris; he became a referee of some distinction and took
football teams to Europe after the First World War to cement the new peace.
Nowadays, you'd describe him as an "Old Labour" man; he rose to
prominence in the Railway Clerks Association, his trade union, and in the
British Workers Sports Federation, for whom he organised tours and managed
sides. He wrote coaching manuals in French and managed Bordeaux between 1945
and 1947. Another son, Charles, played for England's Olympic team at the 1920
games in Brussels. The Bunyans were - and probably still are - a remarkable
family.

My thanks go to Gunnar Persson,
a Swedish football historian, for assistance in compiling this biography.